The Ongoing Struggle with Time

I wish I could say that God slayed my Time idol once and for all during my 40-day stint at Poverello. Not so. While I’ve made progress (thanks to God’s grace), my struggle with time is still very real.

I still live in the near-paranoia that there isn’t enough time; the tension between giving time and keeping it to myself; the rage against efficiency and productivity. Like I said in my last post, time is valuable. It is God’s gift. And I want to spend it well.  

Kate Bowler recently introduced me to Mary Oliver’s poem, “Summer Day.”[1] The latter part of the poem goes like this:

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

I’m not particularly adept at interpreting poetry (to the chagrin of my high school AP Literature teacher[2]), but what I know is that poetry is written art—it can be interpreted any number of ways.

I think the final question in Oliver’s poem is simultaneously haunting and invigorating. Life is wild. It is precious. And we only have one. Hence, Oliver’s inquiry—how do we intend to spend it? While the poem crescendos in this question, it’s really the third to last question that punches me in the gut.

Up to this point in the poem, Oliver has been reveling in God’s creation. She has spent an entire day meandering in a field, soaking in the sun, looking at grasshoppers, oblivious to deadlines and to-do lists. She then asks,

“Tell me, what else should I have done?”

The genius of the question (I think) is that it’s both rhetorical and real. Oliver’s question invites her audience to think and reflect; to consider how they spend their days; to answer the question for themselves. But I also think she’s genuinely asking herself, her audience, and God, whether she should’ve spent her day differently. In reflecting on her own leisurely day, she wants to know whether she should’ve been attentive to other things. She attuned to what she thought was most important, but is requesting feedback. Should she have invested her time elsewhere?

Oliver’s deeply existential question plagues us all. And how we answer it varies dramatically.

For many, Oliver’s jaunt in the field feels like a giant waste of time, especially considering our differing commitments, obligations, and life circumstances. For others, lounging in God’s creation is right on the money. I think it’s important to recognize that Oliver’s summer day is descriptive (it works for her), not necessarily prescriptive (it’s not meant for all of us).

What is prescriptive, however, is the attentiveness and intentionality that seep through Oliver’s experience. Oliver’s poem advocates for a deep awareness of the things around us; for radical attunement to how we spend our time. We are responsible for what we do with our time, for attuning to what’s most important. Why? Because death is the great equalizer. It’s coming for us all. And it’s this last bit—imminent death—that makes Oliver’s questions that much weightier and more urgent.

I crave Oliver’s experience. Yet, like most of us, I don’t have the luxury of burning time in a field all day. I spend most of my days in productivity’s grasp, buzzing around to get as much done as possible before the clock hits 5pm (or sometimes 8pm). I often define this as intentional. If I’m doing than I’m not squandering. This is what I think I should be doing. But maybe I should be doing something else. Perhaps busyness is the biggest waste of all.

And this is why the third-to-last question particularly gets me—I so rarely ask it. And I think I’m missing out by neglecting to ask it.

What I’ve come to realize is that how we spend our days equates to how we spend our months, our years, and ultimately, our lifetime. Despite what physics is theorizing, from my current location on Earth, time still feels very linear, one-dimensional, and fast. Considering, perhaps we can intentionally slow down by asking ourselves on the daily,

“Tell me, what else should I have done?”

[1] To clarify, I don’t know Kate Bowler personally (though I would be honored to). I’m going through her Lenten devotional right now.

[2] Ms. Bennett, if you ever read this, you were the first person to affirm my writing gift. I’ve carried this with me ever since.

Inefficient Service

In my previous post, I commented on how miserly I am with my time. Considering (as you can imagine), how I spend my time is of great importance to me. I want full say, full control over what I do with the time I have. Apparently, this is true even when it comes to service.

Frequently, we’re unaware of how rooted our attitudes are until we’re in new settings. This was true of Poverello—it merely magnified my deep-seated attitude toward time.

During the third week of Lent last year, my husband asked me how volunteering was going. I remember telling him that I felt like there was a lot of standing around time; that I wasn’t doing very much. While absurd, I remember telling him I would like to “efficient-ize” serving the homeless. He chuckled at my comment and said, “Remember, the time you’ve most enjoyed has been talking with the other people volunteering.” Once again, he was right.

After hearing my husband’s comment, I felt like Saul (Paul) in Acts 9:18—something like scales fell from my eyes and my sight was restored. I chose to approach my remaining time at Poverello through the lens of his comment. My big takeaway was this:

Service isn’t (always) about efficiency.

While glaringly obvious to many, this revelation was God’s greatest gift to me during those 40 days. What I failed to realize, but which my husband’s exhortation unearthed, was that I was approaching service like I approached my to-do list. Service was a task to be accomplished, quantified by how many people I served, how many tables I bussed, how busy I was during the time I was giving. Standing around talking to people, while waiting for the kitchen expeditor to call out which plates were ready, didn’t feel like service.

However, the paradigm shift brought on by my husband’s comment allowed me to approach Poverello not as something to do, but as something to experience. God wasn’t asking me to be busier. God was inviting me to enjoy the people, enjoy being a part of something bigger than myself, and dare I say, enjoy the inefficiency. These very lulls and lags created the space, the quiet, for me to reflect on the meaning of service.  And ultimately, to reflect on my attitude toward time. My biggest takeaway was this:

Time isn’t (always) about efficiency.

When it comes to time, I often confuse quality with efficiency. Ironically, in an effort to optimize or “efficient-ize” my time, I frequently forsake the very quality I seek. To clarify, I do think we should be conscientious of our time.[1] Time is a valuable resource and needs to be stewarded well. However, for me, I often conflate stewarding with streamlining, and end up sacrificing relationships and life’s simple pleasures on the altar of efficiency. Poverello taught me that quality and efficiency aren’t synonymous; and that sometimes, inefficiency actually yields higher quality.   

There were many sub-lessons within these overarching ones—the importance of serving with a community of people, the church’s call to service, that giving time does not mean losing time—but the greatest of these was simply that service (and time) are about being present, conversing, and indulging in relationship.

[1] More on this in the next post.

You Cannot Serve Both God and Time

At the beginning of this year’s Lenten season, I’m reminded of my experience during last year’s.  Last year, as I contemplated how to celebrate, honor, and practice Lent, I was drawn to Jesus’ teaching about mammon in the Sermon on the Mount.[1]

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6.24, New International Version)

However, the message for me wasn’t about money, but about time. God seemed to be saying, “You cannot serve both God and Time.”[2]

I’m not saying I don’t struggle with mammon. But, if time and money were in a competition for my worship and allegiance, time would absolutely win. Time is something I hold tightly. It’s something I hoard. It’s a valuable commodity because it’s finite. I’m acutely aware of its limited supply, and thus, it’s something I struggle to share or give freely.  In short, time had become my master; it was the source of my devotion; it was what I served.

Embedded in the above warning, however, was an invitation. God was inviting me to give up time, to displace it from its first-place position in my life. In the church, we often tell people that giving money (mammon) is a way to release its hold on their lives. I think the same applies to time—give it and you’re less likely to worship it.

My response to God’s invitation: serve weekly at the Poverello House (one of Fresno’s homeless shelters).

Now, as someone who hoards time, weekly felt sufficient. This is what I felt I could realistically give, while still trusting God to manage my other commitments and obligations. However, when I shared this action step with my husband, he encouraged me to stretch a bit more, to open myself up to possibly serving two times a week, trusting that the same Spirit who convicted me to give my time would sustain me in actually giving it.

I was less than thrilled with my husband’s response (I didn’t have enough time to give more time!). Yet, it seemed like sage advice, so I went with it.

My next post will reflect on what I learned.

[1] μαμμωνᾷ is the Greek word behind the word money.

[2] Time is capitalized to capture its idol-like status in my life.

Letter to the Cancerites

I was eavesdropping and couldn’t help but smile when I heard my husband tell one of his friends, “I’ve got a pretty good case of melanoma,” as if he had a cold or the flu, rather than a potentially life-threatening diagnosis. We’d just received the news hours before and this moment brought some much-needed levity. What we only knew in part in this moment (that my husband had malignant melanoma), we would know in full one month later (that he had Stage IIIC, regionally metastatic, melanoma). Over the last four months, this is what I’ve learned as a cancer bystander.

1)      Everyone lives under the burden of death, whether we know it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not. We rarely contemplate our own mortality because we’re too busy trying to escape it.

2)      PET scans give a whole new meaning to the Imagine Dragons’ song, “Radioactive.”

3)      The rarity, and gift, of living in the radically now. Several months ago, during winter quarter, one of my classmates commented on the significance of “living in the radically now.” As we were one day post-cancer diagnosis, I was particularly struck by her phraseology. She could’ve said, “radically living in the now” or “living radically in the now,” but she didn’t. She’s an intentional speaker—she doesn’t use words flippantly—thus, I knew her emphasis on the “radically now” was deliberate. I don’t necessarily know what she intended, but this is my best guess: the “now” is radical because we so infrequently live in it. We often spend copious amounts of time contemplating the past and daydreaming (or worrying) about the future, rather than enjoying the present. This sometimes-fixation on both past and future robs us of the profundity of the now. Yet, when a cancer diagnosis comes down the pipeline (or any news that creates an existential crisis), the now is all you have, as tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.

4)      Cancer is the great equalizer. It doesn’t discriminate against race, religion, gender, age, socioeconomic rank, or health status.

5)      Life is like the game Chutes and Ladders. Sometimes you’re going up, sometimes you’re going down.

6)      Cancer is a liminal space. I’ve learned a lot of big words in my PhD program thus far, liminal being one of them. It was a favorite of my professor who taught my first seminar. Liminal refers to being in an intermediate state, phase, or condition. I’ve come to realize that cancer is such a state. It’s the space between “something’s not right” and diagnosis; between diagnosis and the first (of many) doctor visits; between drinking radioactive dye and the first PET/CT scan to determine metastatic disease; between surgery and prognosis; between monthly immunotherapy infusions and trimonthly scans; between denial and acceptance; between hope and reality; between life and death.

7)      An otolaryngologist is a head and neck specialist (a big word I did not learn in my PhD program).

8)      Cancer is a hierarchy, with skin cancer at the bottom of the totem pole. Most people see it as a lesser cancer, until you tell them it’s gone internal (though, even then, some people fail to grasp the seriousness).

9)      Living with cancer is a practice. Knowing how to live with a life-threatening diagnosis requires constant recalibration of expectations, priorities, and relationships. Early on, my husband and I didn’t know whether to cancel plans or make them; to celebrate his birthday or prepare for his funeral; to invest in the long term or throw caution to the wind; to continue living like nothing was amiss or throw daily pity parties for ourselves. As I said in #6, cancer is a liminal space and navigating it involves humor, openness, heartbreak, and becoming master tension dwellers—those who can dwell well in uncertainty. In teaching us what it means to live with cancer, God has continually brought me back to Jeremiah 29:1-7 (New International Version).

Jeremiah 29 is a letter, which Jeremiah writes to the exiled Israelites in Babylon. For the Israelites, exile was tantamount to death. They’d been removed from their land, their temple, their customs, their very existence. They were dwelling in a foreign land, with foreign people, who had foreign customs and worship practices, seemingly cut off from God’s presence and everything else that gave them identity, purpose, and life. In such a disoriented, grief-stricken state, it’s little wonder that the Israelites were unsure of what to do or how to live. Yet it’s in this place of death that God speaks words of life.

“Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.”

The Israelites had hoped for a short-term exile, but in Jeremiah 29, God tells them to hunker down for a 70-year stay. These directives are motivated by this longer sojourn, yet, more importantly, they’re a reminder that life is still found amid (what feels like) death.

Cancer is a type of exile. It often feels like we’re living amid death. Yet, it’s been in this very place, that God has spoken words of life.

 “Pursue your studies, continue flight training, make plans to travel, invest in your home, rejoice in your friends and family.”

Like the Israelites, we too are hoping for a short-term exile. However, even if it’s a longer-term stay, God has lovingly shown us how to continue living.

I Would Look for Bunny for Years, and Years, and Years

As school started up on Monday, I was reminded of a moment two years ago when my then favorite 5-year-old (he’s now 7) started kindergarten. While we were briefly playing before his mom took him to school, he put his bunny—whose formal name is Bunny, a treasured stuffed animal since birth—into his new backpack. I let him know that Bunny, sadly, couldn’t go to school with him. He inquired, “Why, Auntie Jess?” to which I responded, “Well, Bunny is very precious, and we don’t want to lose him. I’m afraid that if you take him to school, he might get lost.” Without hesitation, he removed Bunny from the backpack, commenting, “if he got lost, I would look for Bunny for years, and years, and years.”

This endearing moment made me smile.

It also made me think of Jesus’ parable of the merchant searching for pearls.

Matthew 13:44-46 is one of Jesus’ shorter parables. “Also, the kingdom of heaven is like a man looking for fine pearls. One day he found a very valuable pearl. The man went and sold everything he had to buy that pearl.” (International Children’s Bible)

While I’m hesitant to say Jesus’ parables are simple (indeed, they’re complex!), in many ways, this parable is a simple simile—"the kingdom of heaven is like a man looking for fine pearls…”

This is a “kingdom” parable. Jesus is communicating the extreme value of God’s kingdom—God’s rule, God’s reign, God’s message—via comparison to a “very valuable pearl.” It seems counterproductive for the man to sell everything for a single pearl. Yet, it’s this very paradox that communicates the preciousness of God’s kingdom.

In the first century, pearls were tremendously valuable. So much so, that one pearl could outweigh the value of all of one’s wealth and possessions. Hence, why the man goes pearl hunting, and why he then gives up everything upon discovering the solo pearl.

The takeaway is simple (though living it out is complex!): we must pursue God’s kingdom (the “very valuable pearl”), and when we discover it, sacrifice all to hold onto it.

My favorite 7-year-old inherently understands this takeaway. For him, Bunny* is the “very valuable pearl.” He would search for Bunny far and wide, for a long, long, time until he found it. And he would give up many of his other toys, including his beloved survival equipment, for Bunny, his prized possession.

I hope and pray that one day he will pursue God’s kingdom just as passionately and persistently.  

*When my favorite 7-year-old started 1st grade last year, he convinced himself it was time to say goodbye to Bunny “as 1st graders probably shouldn’t have stuffed animals.” However, his resignation waned, and as he starts 2nd grade this year, Bunny is still around (thankfully).

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